Here at THE VINYL DISTRICTwe're good consumers. All Mp3's are posted to promote and give exposure to the music and are linked for a limited time. Please download to preview, then head promptly to your local vinyl vendor (or - OK, CD store too) and fork over your hard earned cash. You'll appreciate the piece of mind.

Got something you think we should be listening to or reading? thevinyldistrict (at) gmail.com

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I’ll clue you in to a little known TVD secret—see all those ads over there to the left? (Go ahead, scroll. I’ll wait...) We haven’t been paid a dime for any of them. On purpose.

I kinda like having that bulletin board of sorts that most good record stores have—the spot for the bands, the fanzines, or the record collectors to staple up their flier announcing something of interest to like minds.

I mention this to underscore the feeling of community that I’ve tried to establish here at ol’ TVD which tends to develop between those like minds—you guys who come here each day or the coterie of DC’s bloggers (and beyond) who genuinely seek to create and distribute ideas, or style, or music. At the heart of those communities in my opinion are record stores.

The web has made it easy to some degree to replicate an iota of that notion here while many of you toil away in your cubes. But I’m wary of those cubes becoming the club houses that used to be record stores.

Because we need these independent shops. Many of them. And happily there are four (or maybe five or six) great ones within DC’s confines that do engender that sense of community. Hell, you can make a short hike of it and hit all of them in one afternoon. I often do.

So, this is my Jerry Lewis Telethon-like pitch for investors to subsidize the brick-and-mortar version of The Vinyl District, except there’s no 7-11, or Walmart, or Organization of Fire Chiefs stepping up with oversized checks for to me to blubber over.

But we can get creative.

Have a store front you’d lease for cheap? Can you work free of charge for a while as things ramp up? Have a band that’ll play a benefit?